


Work Well Together

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Hiveswap, Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grocery Store, Clown Rap, Drug Use, Friends to Lovers, Humanstuck, I just figured I'd tag it 'cause I don't know everyone's threshold, M/M, the violence isn't actually that graphic, well... honestly more like a Wal-Mart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-03 15:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15821727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Karkat has been working with Gamzee for years, now, and his presence feels like one of those rare universal constants.  Until - of course - the week Gamzee unexpectedly vanishes.





	1. How Things Have Been

**Author's Note:**

> Hi~ Thank you very much for reading! I hope you enjoy this fic/chapter one! Gasp!
> 
> I've had so many ideas for Gamzee/Karkat stories set in stores, for ages now... I decided to finally just go with one.

Karkat Vantas had been working with Gamzee for years, sort of.  Just about as long as he’d been at the H-Mart, anyway.  They _were_ in different departments…  But even so.  Their employee lockers were close together, and they’d started talking because of Gamzee accidentally trying to open Karkat’s a bunch of times.  Probably.  That was how Karkat remembered it, at least.  Gamzee had decorated both lockers in a fit of inspiration, one day – cut up magazines and scuffed old nametags, Halloween-themed coupons and jagged slices of one of his clown rap concert flyers.  Karkat could just glance at those lockers and remember so much, memories coming at him in a wave.  Mostly how bewildered he’d been when he first noticed Gamzee’s decorations, honestly, but plenty of other times, too.  It probably meant something that he hadn’t just immediately taken all those decorations down.

Karkat thought maybe someday he’d quit and go chasing the sort of tie-wearing, new-car-smell job he used to brag about being a shoe-in for…  Or maybe someday he’d switch stores, just for a change in pace – find _new_ squeaky linoleum to stand on, or something.

But not yet.  It didn’t matter as much as Karkat’s older brother Kankri seemed to expect it would, even if money was a pain in the ass too much of the time and some of the customers could fuck right off.  There was just _something_ about that store that made Karkat hate it less than he really thought he should, by that point, and it wasn’t only how people theorized the “H” in “H-Mart” stood for “Horse” instead of their boss’s actual last name.  The guy was sort of like that.

Karkat stocked those sticky plastic aisles with cereal boxes and tweezers and cartons of milk with unnaturally cheerful cows on them, and Gamzee worked in the bakery, decorating birthday cakes and occasionally slipping up on purpose so he put some fancy pastries in the “Free Cookies!” display.  Just to “Make somebody’s motherfucking day,” as he put it, or something equally saccharine/fire-able.  Gamzee’d told Karkat all about it in a low, sing-song drawling voice.  He’d nudged Karkat’s arm like, “ _You_ get it, man,” and Karkat had assured him he most certainly did not get anything at all, no matter how many early mornings they’d spent murmuring half-asleep jokes over the frozen cake display counter.  No matter how many sloppily wrapped-up reject donuts Gamzee had slipped him when Karkat was stressed about finals and everybody, everybody knew it.

Karkat couldn’t have possibly been in love with Gamzee Makara.  He told himself that whenever he went on dates with the sort of people who wore slick suits and had never even heard of clown rap – he told himself that when he covered for Gamzee dealing with customers on the bleary-eyed mornings after – you guessed it – clown rap concert nights.  Gamzee’s voice still slurred a little, on mornings like that, and his eyes were wet and red and soft like a bruise.  Karkat gave him shit when he walked into the counter, on those sorts of days, but he also reminded him to scrub the leftover clown paint out of his hair in the staff bathroom sink before someone like Vriska the Infamous Supervisor saw.

Gamzee was part of a clown rap duo with his brother Kurloz, after all, and he would’ve just spent the last several hours cackling and/or enthusiastically chanting about carnival themed murder.  That meant wandering lyrics featuring a lot of people drowned in Sno-Cone syrup, or with their skulls smashed into some unsuspecting funhouses mirrors, as Karkat understood it.  Would’ve been understandable enough, for Gamzee to forget about the remains of his paint.  Sometimes it clung to the inside of his lips a little, too, dark grey and greasy, staining his teeth.  Karkat had never seen Gamzee with his face all painted properly, though.  At least, not off the flier pieces taped to the front of his locker.  _He_ got “morning after” Gamzee, over and over again.

Yeah, Karkat told himself that he couldn’t be in love with Gamzee Makara just the same way he told himself that Gamzee couldn’t be his best friend in that whole stupid city, either…  And maybe, actually, his best friend in the world.  The idea felt strange and too honest on his tongue.  He knew Gamzee would laugh, if he heard it, and maybe open up his arms for a hug.  The whole world would smell like the bakery department, for a second, and probably whatever strange smoke Gamzee breathed instead of air when he was outside the store, too.  Just faintly.  Somewhere under all those baking cookies…  All that caramel drizzle and too-sweet, sugar flower frosting.

That changed, the week Gamzee didn’t come in to work, and nobody knew exactly where he had gone.  Personal Time.  Unpaid Vacation Leave.  All that.

That week began with Karkat forgetting his work keys and counting on Gamzee to notice and let him in – which he didn’t – and ended in a crumbling parking lot under the stars.  Remember that, okay?  The key, the parking lot, and a sky dizzy with cold, faraway light.


	2. The Store Without Him

After somebody _finally_ let Karkat into the store on that first day without any sign of Gamzee at all, he vowed not to ask too many questions.  Sometimes people called in sick, after all – sometimes Gamzee forgot he was working and brought himself uncomfortably close to getting fired, too.  All that was normal, normal enough.  Dirk Strider teased him a little in that dry, one-eyebrow-raised way he had, when he eventually noticed Karkat banging on the sliding glass doors to come inside…  But at least it hadn’t been Caliborn setting up shop just then.

The floor needed to be scrubbed clean just the same as always, that day, and Karkat got dragged in a million directions by customers that apparently couldn’t be bothered to read the big ass directory sign strung up above the aisles.  Jade tended to her row of small plants along the window in the break room; the robot Dirk had “lost” in the store’s vents last month kept clattering along and scraping against its labyrinthine metal walls like it thought it was in a horror movie.  Whenever customers asked about it, Karkat recited the same answer about “weird old pipes” and pretended to be really, really busy with something else.

Gamzee had explained everything once – explained about Dirk’s robot in the vents, wide-eyed and embarrassingly honest – but the lady he’d been talking to hadn’t believed him.  She’d complained to Vriska, who got a good, Pirate Queen-style laugh out of it.

Karkat didn’t ask outright about Gamzee, that day, and he was proud of himself for some stiff, stomach-squirming reason…  But he _did_ try to text the old, old number he’d gotten from Gamzee around the time they started working together.  Some stranger replied and told him to fuck off, in the end.  Huh.  When had Gamzee even changed phones?  _Had_ he changed phones?  If he’d given Karkat a new number, it had probably ended up crumpled up in his pocket or something and put through the wash.  Or Karkat had said, “Oh, yeah -- I’ll get you to put that in my phone, later,” and then just never did.    The thought spread like a sour taste in his mouth, but a lot of thoughts did that just fine, already, day-to-day-to-day.  Karkat reminded himself that they probably weren’t close enough for Gamzee to really care, and tried to move on.  He considered asking their boss, that elusive Mr. H, for Gamzee’s new number…  But it wasn’t exactly easy to approach that guy, unless your end goal was to discuss horse-centric art movements.  Honestly, Karkat didn’t know nearly as much about all that as Equius the security guard.

Gamzee had just always been _there_ , you know?  Behind the counter, biting his tongue between his teeth, concentrating as he wrote the word “Congratulations!” in loopy frosting swirls.  It was a whole long do-over thing whenever he spelled something wrong, so sometimes he had Karkat write out words on napkins for him before he gave them a try.

Day after day, week after week, _for years_ , Gamzee’d been there.  Or, you know, he’d called in panicking because he knew he was forty-five minutes late and wondering if anybody’d noticed yet.  Gamzee’d always been at work and easy to find, or Karkat had known he’d be back in soon enough.  Now, though, he wasn’t so sure.  He got less and less sure as the week ground on, too, which felt sort of like wearing a hole into the knee of some blue jeans.  Sooner or later, Karkat knew he’d be able to see right through himself, and he’d have to deal with whatever came next.

Karkat _did_ end up asking about Gamzee – but only vaguely, in passing – over the next handful of days…  To pretty mixed results.  Dirk shrugged vaguely, still on the phone with his chipper British boyfriend; Jane, who also worked in the bakery, assured him she would’ve known about it if there was anything seriously wrong.  Something to do with Gamzee still commenting on her cake blog, proving he was alive and probably not too miserable to type lots of clown-nosed smiley faces.  Vriska the Infamous Supervisor pretended to think, tossing her head back so the gold-and-rhinestone studs in her lower lip caught the light.  She smiled brightly when she said, “Oh, I don’t know.  Maybe he’s really gonna get fired this time?  I haven’t received notice or anything yet, but you know Mr. H.”

Karkat kept trying _not_ to ask himself why Gamzee just disappeared without letting him know what was going on…  But if he was honest with himself, there was a pretty strong possibility Gamzee had mentioned whatever this was, once or twice, and Karkat just hadn’t heard him.  Hadn’t thought it was _necessary_ to hear him.  Whatever it was, he usually figured Gamzee would say it again if he needed to know.

Obviously Karkat thought about other things, throughout that Gamzee-less week.  He let Kankri lecture him about his Philosophy classes every now and then, for example, and kept on proofreading his online friend Eridan’s incredibly long and historically accurate pirate romance novel.  But Gamzee’s disappearance stung more than when his last slick-suited date had canceled on him twice in a row; the bakery felt too still and quiet when Karkat passed by, now, and he had to be extra careful to remember his key in the mornings.

The next few days without Gamzee anywhere found Karkat hanging out with his other work-friend, Terezi Pyrope, enough for her to express how fucking suspicious he’d been making her lately.  Usually Karkat would tromp by and mutter some complaints to Terezi, get teased a little, and then tromp away.  Not so much, now.  Terezi was rearranging women’s sweaters, and Karkat kept slipping away from stocking shelves to help her.  Terezi was half-bickering with one of her law school classmates – some ferrety guy who’d come in to buy moisturizer – and Karkat headed over to see what the argument was about.  (Something to do with whose turn it was to host their group’s weekly study session, apparently.  This guy _really_ didn’t like what Terezi and the other almost-lawyers did to his carpets.)

After a while, Terezi pointed at Karkat with one of her classmate's moisturizer rejects and said, “Come help me with something in the break room, Vantas.  Okay?  We need to talk about…  This.”

Karkat followed her back into the break room, then.  He made sure Terezi knew that if they got in trouble for ditching their posts it was gonna be _all on her_ , now, but he followed just the same.  Terezi walked with a certain sureness Karkat envied no matter how many times he watched her.  She was all sharp angles and long bones, where Gamzee was soft and swaying – rounded lines and messy hair – and Karkat wasn’t completely sure what _he_ was, himself.  Tripping over his shoelaces and then swearing at the air until someone passing by gave him a weird look, maybe.

Karkat watched Terezi slump against the employee lockers, and let his gaze drift over to the one Gamzee had decorated for him a long, long time ago.  There was the cutesy maniacal Jack ‘o Lantern two-for-one voucher…  There was a cut-out of Karkat’s face from that one time he’d been in the H-Mart nationwide newsletter for an Employee Interview of the Month thing.

Terezi fished more _words_ out of Karkat than he’d really known he had, then – words of denial and frustration and embarrassment and all the rest.  When he was done stumbling and swearing and calling her names he’d want to take back pretty much immediately, Terezi said, “Okay, so we don’t have this clown’s phone number.  We’ll find him online.  Easy.”

“He doesn’t really deal with social media, I don’t think,” Karkat said.  “He hangs out on a cake blog, though, I guess?  Of all fucking things?  You’d think he’d get enough cake talk at work.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Terezi said, flicking her wrist out in the general direction of the cut-up flyer spread between Gamzee and Karkat’s lockers.  “He has a band, and if they’re not online I’ll work the registers with Caliborn for a month.”

Nobody liked working the registers with Caliborn – he always ended up getting into fights, somehow, and once drew mean caricatures of a customer on the back of their bag of frozen peas – but Karkat had to admit Terezi had a point.  He’d never actually Googled Gamzee’s clown rap duo name before…  Though it would have been a definite lie to say he hadn’t thought about it.  Maybe that step felt a little too serious, like a tangible expression of whatever investment he had in Gamzee's life.   He'd have to erase it from his search history on purpose, after all, or just know it was lurking there, waiting...  Reminding him of what he'd never been able to admit even to himself.   Maybe Karkat would've been disappointed, if he Googled it and didn't actually find anything.  Maybe he would've been disappointed if he'd Googled it and found a Gamzee that felt like a stranger, too.  

But all the same...  All the same, when they searched for the “Makara Brothers’ Slaughter Circus” on Terezi’s phone it brought up ads for something Karkat realized he might actually have gotten a standing invitation to.  Or, you know, a wad of hand-drawn tickets he’d been given months ago, that were probably crumpled up somewhere in the back of his locker or…  And this would be worse, somehow…  Folded up neatly in a birthday card Gamzee’d made for him, and waiting in his nightstand drawer back home.


	3. The Knock-Knock Lounge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi again!! Welcome to chapter three. :) I hope you have fun with it! It's kinda soft and silly, tbh. Sorry, world. I... Ahh, it was fun to write. 
> 
> Also, I've been trying to name something the Knock-Knock Lounge for AGES. I keep scrapping my drafts with different "Knock-Knock Lounge"-es in them.... But now. The time has come. This Knock-Knock Lounge incarnation is based p heavily off the imagery in Chahut's friendsim route. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you have a great day!

Usually when Gamzee and his brother Kurloz did concerts it was at bars around the city, places with questionable stains in the bathrooms and broken neon signs Karkat squinted at to read from across the street before walking on.  Sometimes they played in parks – and then occasionally got banned from said parks by angry strangers, which Gamzee laughed about sort of sadly – or their friends’ mysterious, smoke-thick basements.  But not this time.

This time, Gamzee’d gone out of state.  From city to city, like something of a tour.  Or, you know…  Literally, _literally_ a tour, as strange as that idea felt to Karkat.  They also sold actual albums, which Karkat hadn’t really thought about before, either.  And apparently they’d sold a _lot_ of albums?  Enough to warrant a tour like this, anyway.  Enough to mean some of the shows listed on their website were actually stamped with a big, dripping-blood _“Sold Out!”_ sign.  There was one of Gamzee’s trademark clown-nose smileys next to those words, every time…  Sometimes winking, sometimes not.  Depended on his mood, probably.  None of it felt completely possible, but there it was.

“Huh, it says here Gamzee does all the album art,” Terezi’d said, still leaning against the employee lockers in their H-Mart break room as though nothing in the world had changed.  One of those album covers featured somebody carved in half and dripping, Karkat noticed, skull cracked open and face stretched to a messy, technicolor cartoon split.  It was sort of funny, imagining Gamzee painting that gore as tenderly as he sculped flowers on cakes.  It fit, knowing Gamzee’s slyly morbid sense of humor, but it was funny all the same.

“Oh.  Huh,” Karkat said.

Terezi was still studying her phone, scrolling around the Makara Brothers’ website.  “I guess Kurloz sets up all the gigs, though.  That makes sense.  I met Kurloz once – seems like the sort of guy who might have an actual planner, somewhere under all the skeleton-print hoodies.”

Karkat had met Kurloz, too, though he remembered thinking it was strange how the guy had looked him up and down the first time he swung by the store and then shrugged at Gamzee with a _“Well, to each their own”_ sort of smile on.  It wasn’t as though Karkat was one of Gamzee’s potential romantic options, or anything like that, right?

Right.

For the first time – or so he told himself – Karkat wondered what sort of disapproving things Kurloz could have murmured about him on the way home, that day, way back when.  Kurloz had come by the store to pick Gamzee up, if he remembered right, since his car was still in the shop after some sort of accident.  There had been no reason for him to stroll around with his long, bony hands folded up in his coat pockets, watching Gamzee’s coworkers just long enough to read everybody’s nametags.  Kurloz hadn’t even bought anything that day, Karkat didn’t think.

Gamzee’d gone out of state, now, and apparently he’d invited Karkat along even before he and Kurloz had picked out concrete venues, yet.  When Karkat and Terezi got back to his apartment after work and found those prototype ticket-invitations, she was generous enough not to taunt him too much about how carefully the card Gamzee gave him had been tucked away.  How secret and spotless it was, and how Karkat had kept the envelope, too.  She did taunt _some_ , but not nearly as much as Karkat had been trying to mentally prepare for when she invited herself over.

Terezi was curious about Gamzee’s birthday card, but Terezi was curious about everything in Karkat’s apartment, he could tell.  She grinned at the rom-com posters on the walls and inspected the stuff in his fridge and chatted with Kankri just long enough for him to start pulling out source materials to reference his debate points.  It hadn’t really occurred to Karkat that Terezi would want to come hang out with him outside of work, _ever_ , in just about the same way it had never occurred to him that the store without Gamzee would feel like such an empty place.

But there Terezi was, clearly wanting to hang out with Karkat at least long enough to solve this mystery.  She didn’t even leave when they found the tickets folded up where Karkat had left them, either.  Those tickets had been cut out of construction paper and painted gold – like keys.  Gamzee’d done them by hand, and had asked Karkat whether he thought it was a good concert ticket design on the back, in parentheses.  Honestly, Terezi found that part out…  Karkat had never actually flipped the tickets over.  He’d assumed they were supposed to be symbolic, or something.  Something sappy and too intimate, something that would make him wince and mutter angrily into his hand.  Maybe it was because Gamzee’d written everything in Crayola-brand markers.

And there it was, you see?  The key, come back around like the hands of a clock when you’re running late for work.  There had always been a key of sorts waiting for Karkat, here, just maybe not at the store’s staff entrance door the way he’d been hoping.

“We’ve missed most of these shows, if he guessed all the potential dates right,” Terezi said, glancing at her phone again and propped against Karkat’s bed, still wearing her H-Mart nametag.  “But the last one’s tomorrow, at someplace called the ‘Knock-Knock Lounge.’  If we drive fast and don’t take a ton of bathroom breaks, we can make it, Vantas.  I can get Vriska to cover for us, if you think you can hold it.”

Karkat didn’t answer, for a second.  He was staring at the gold-painted ticket-keys.  He was imagining himself actually going to all those shows listed on the website, night after night, as one of the Makara Brothers’ personal guests.  He was wondering if the music was really as terrible as he’d always imagined; he was wondering if Gamzee had asked him about the tickets ever again, after giving them.  If Karkat had expressed disinterest; if he’d said the gold paint was a little cheesy and had flaked off on his hands.

If someone had asked Karkat that morning whether Terezi Pyrope would drop everything to get him to Gamzee Makara’s mysterious clown rap performance in another state, he would’ve thought they were fucking with him…  And he probably would’ve had something rude to say about it, honestly.

But that’s what Terezi did, anyway, and she got him to buy all the driving snacks and gas as payment, too.  She reminded him that it was a real deal he was getting, here, and Karkat didn’t exactly have a good comeback to that one.  It had been easy to think he was so much more alone than he – apparently – actually was, but now he found himself listening to one of Terezi’s dragon-themed audiobooks like they were more than work friends, more than almost-strangers.  And they absolutely _were_ somehow, Karkat guessed.  That fucking book had so many descriptions of “leathery wings” and “ferocious claws.”  Terezi had tossed a bunch of serious-looking folders and stray pens into the back of her car before they went, and when Kankri asked her what Karkat was like at work…  Damn.  Terezi had an arsenal of embarrassing stories just ready and waiting, but of course she did.

Karkat only asked why she was willing to go out of her way for him once, and Terezi smirked, then.

“You have a hard time thinking people could actually care about you, don’t you?” she’d said.  “Maybe I just felt like shaking things up a little.  Maybe I’ve been studying in every spare second and I was either gonna do this…  Or, I don’t know.   Flip over everything not bolted down in the campus library.  Who knows?”

Who knows.

The Knock-Knock Lounge wasn’t exactly like the bars in Karkat’s city, at least not any bars _he_ knew.  The stage at the back was all sweet-drifting smoke and dripping candles; the ceiling was hanging with harlequin-print cloth and stripes, like a circus tent hidden away in the middle of downtown.  It was clearly a fire hazard, and all the specialty drinks on the blackboard behind the bar were either violent – like maybe someone actually _wanted_ to drink ground-up bones in a cocktail, with a little paper umbrella balanced cheerfully on top – or surprisingly poetic.  Sometimes a mix of both that reminded Karkat of how Gamzee talked, every now and then.  Not every day, but…  But often enough, now that Karkat thought about it.

Terezi asked the bartender – a huge, soft-eyed woman with tangled hair and polka-dot pants – whether she could get a soda, please…  And also, incidentally, when the band would get there.  You know, the Makara Brothers’ Slaughter Circus.  They were playing that night, right?  Karkat kept trying to shush her, but she spat the whole question out anyway.

Maybe Karkat was mistaken, but he thought there was a sort of knowing look in the bartender’s eye even before she asked, “You got tickets, darlin’?” and nodded at Gamzee’s home-drawn keys like everything made a perfect kind of sense.


	4. Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so first off... This chapter is definitely longer than I meant it to be. :P I tried to edit it down, I really did, but I just keep making it longer... Ahahaha. Hm. Hopefully it worked out okay... And also, this is p dang sappy. You have been warned. Thank you so, so much for sticking through to this story until the end, though!! It means a ton to me that you took time to read this. I hope it's been a fun ride, and I'm sorry for anything at all I might've messed up.
> 
> Fun fact, Chahut helping Kurloz find places over the phone is based off something my friend CytosineSkald has done for me before. Pffft. Thank you, CytosineSkald/Meredith. <3
> 
> And thanks to all of you reading this far, again!!! Ahhh!!!

Chahut – it turned out that was the enormous bartender’s name – _would_  have reached out to Gamzee right away, then, if Karkat hadn’t grabbed at her spine-twisting, bottle-smashing strong hands. Shaking his head; gaping like a fish. Maybe she took pity on the frustration in his face, or maybe she just thought he must have had something better planned for meeting up at Gamzee’s concert on his own terms...  Something special, like in an especially murder clown-filled rom-com.

What would that have even meant, though?  Ax-bouquets whipped out of someone’s sleeves with a drawling “Ta-da”— or something to do with piles and piles of bicycle horns – or maybe the lead clown would hide an overcharged joy buzzer in their palm when they finally worked up the nerve to hold someone’s hand?  Karkat was embarrassed just considering it, even if he did think the idea might’ve made Gamzee laugh.  He had a slow, deep-in-his-chest laugh, sometimes.  It sounded sort of like he’d just woken up, all the way through to the end of the work day when all the best donuts in the case were gone and the display glass had become mostly fingerprint smudges.

Karkat acted like Chahut might be on to something, just a little, just sort of coyly.  His insides were swimming, and he had recently realized Chahut was wearing a Makara Brother’s Slaughter Circus shirt.  Maybe she’d bought if off their website; maybe Gamzee had passed it over to her in person, casually and trusting like he’d known she wouldn’t make fun or shove his hands away.  Chahut called their clown rap duo “the Circus” for short... She offered to drive Karkat over to where Gamzee was staying, if he wanted to go. She had the address all loaded in her phone and everything – Kurloz had been having some trouble finding it, before, so she’d talked him through things in the middle of the night.  Her voice was molasses-sweet and sing-song – just the right sort of voice to give rambling directions when a person’s lost at four AM, Terezi said.  Karkat couldn’t completely tell if she was joking, but Chahut nodded sagely.

It would’ve made sense to contact Gamzee before all the strangers got to the Knock-Knock Lounge, and the rampant “substances” or whatever started up, and…  Of course…  The show.  That would’ve been the _logical_ course of action.  Chahut could’ve told her bouncers Karkat had a backstage pass, at the very least, so he could go watch Gamzee put on his makeup and all that pre-show stuff; Chahut could’ve smeared clown paint on both Karkat and Terezi as a sort of so-unlikely-it-feels-impossible surprise, even. Or a game, to see how long it took Gamzee to get that it was them. To see his mouth fall open and realization dawn crisp and tangy-orange-juice-bright as the sun.

But Karkat told her “Not tonight,” and ranted with Terezi in the car until it was nearly time for the concert, instead. It was a shitty choice in plenty of ways, but he had known how “in his own head” he would be for the next few hours even while he was making it. Terezi convinced Karkat to help her comb through her sources for some school thing she had to write up for a while – the trunk of her car was so full of paper it looked like a backpack full of very important books had gotten murdered there, it turned out.  They watched a couple episodes of a police drama on her phone, too, and she only told him it was silly to get cold feet now a couple times.

This was just the same exact Gamzee Makara Karkat had always known, even if pretty clown-paint Amazons like Chahut wore his band’s logo around.  Gamzee fell asleep in the H-Mart break room all the time, flopped over on a plastic chair and limp as a rag doll…  Like he was on a couch back home, sort of, breathing deep and vulnerable in a way Karkat found difficult to understand, let alone describe.  Gamzee doodled potential cake designs on the back of expired coupons, and he had offered to go beat the shit out of one of Karkat’s temporary fancy-car boyfriends when he turned out to be an asshole.  Gamzee was dopey and earnest and familiar as the H-Mart itself.

Wasn’t he?

And, you know... Gamzee had  _wanted_  Karkat to come to these shows, from the beginning. Wanted him to come along before pretty much anyone besides Kurloz, it looked like, honestly. This whole thing wasn’t supposed to be a mystery at all, whatever the fuck Karkat had made of it.

Maybe next time Karkat would be there to watch Gamzee paint on his clown face…  There from the beginning.  Maybe next time he’d give him a pep talk before the first show of the tour, and squeeze his arm as he headed onstage.

Nobody around Karkat seemed to think it was too late for any of that - not Terezi with her crime shows, not Chahut who was a little excited to see the “first-ever actual tickets” Gamzee had apparently posted about on the band’s website in real life.  But if Karkat could’ve gone back over his last few months and stomped out any time he’d talked to Gamzee about beautiful strangers in his apartment building...  All the times he’d reminded himself he couldn’t possibly be in love with Gamzee, or think of him like a best friend, or miss him outside those yellowish plaster H-Mart walls...

Karkat felt sick to his stomach as the concert was starting up.  It was too late to turn back, though, and he didn’t even want to know what Terezi would say about wasted road trip time – _nevermind_ vacation hours/favors to call in with Vriska – if he suggested it.

Karkat waited until the show was already going before heading in with Terezi, at least – you could hear the whimsical, tangled-up music from the street.  The Knock-Knock Lounge barely had room for them, at that point, and somebody kicking over one of those fucking candles felt like an all-too-real threat.  But Chahut let them in without hesitation.  She patted Karkat’s back so hard it stung, and pulled Terezi aside to get a drink order. On the house, she said. For family, she said, whatever the fuck that meant.

Karkat wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep anything down, but he held the drink Terezi brought him anyway and watched Gamzee banter with the crowd onstage. He played the clown, and Kurloz played the ringmaster, sometimes. Other times they swapped it around, or took on new roles altogether for the sake of an act. It almost seemed like Gamzee Makara was more comfortable in clown paint than his own face.  Comfortable under the woozy, shifting lights; comfortable in the blur and raw-voiced chaos of it all.

They sang about puppets with hollow laughing plastic eyes, reaching into your mind and changing you; they sang about a spider enchantress that tangled her webs down a person’s throat and ripped their motherfucking voice out.  And of course, of course, they sang about that “slaughter circus” they liked so damn much, and all its reasons for being Karkat hadn’t really known before.  It wasn’t his thing, really…  But that’s not to say it was as bad as it could’ve been, you know?

It was Gamzee’s voice, familiar and swaying and just the same as always, except now people clapped for him and knew his stage name like an old friend. Except now people whispered among themselves pointing at Karkat, or waved at him, or called out references he didn’t honestly understand.  A set of twins in strange half-masks with crooked horns shoved him to the front of the crowd, when they recognized him…  Or heard the rumors about him, probably.  They were giggling a little too desperately for comfort and their hands were deathly cold, but they were careful enough not to spill Karkat’s drink or anything.

The look on Gamzee’s face when he saw Karkat there, too, was plain as day even through the clown paint. Now that Karkat thought about it, that look wasn’t too different from the one Gamzee wore when he came to let him into the store on mornings when he’d forgotten his work keys.

Kurloz grinned at the crowd and raised a finger over his lips like, “Shh, my brothers and sisters – time for a little break, got it?” a minute or so afterwards, and his voice was silky as coffin lining.  That was how Gamzee’d climbed off the stage and waded through the crowd…  That was how he and Karkat ended up out in that parking lot, you know?   Karkat shuffled his feet over scuffed concrete and kicked at rocks.  He carried his drink outside, but Chahut didn’t say a damn thing about liquor laws or her glassware.  Gamzee didn’t seem sure what to do with his hands.

Gamzee said, “Shit, man, I didn’t think you were gonna be able to fucking make it!  Thought I’d see you next week, probably bring you a keychain or mug or something.  I’ve been looking out for your name, when we stop places.”

And Karkat said, “Well…  I’m here, so.  Joke’s on you, I guess.”

His voice came out angrier than he meant it to, but Gamzee laughed, low and sloppy.  Apparently he and Kurloz had a song called “Joke’s on You”… But Karkat didn’t find out about that until a little later.

For now, Gamzee reached out and slung an arm around Karkat’s shoulder -- something like a half-hug.  He did it tentatively, making it clear Karkat could duck away at any time, but…  But of course he didn’t.  Not now.  He might have hugged back just a little, even.  They sat on the curb and talked about the show, talked about Karkat’s drive up with Terezi in the vaguest terms possible.  Apparently Gamzee already knew some about that series of dragon books – he was the sort of person who tried to take everybody up on different recommendations, after all – though he said he’d had a hard time keeping track of all the draconic military titles even when he was dead sober.  There _were_ a ton of them, though.  Karkat had gathered that much himself.

The sky was huge and heavy above them, then, and the stars were brighter here than Karkat ever saw them back in their home city.  Brighter than the stars rose over H-Mart, anyway, no matter how many cheap self-assembly telescopes they sold.  No matter how many cakes Gamzee made with edible glitter and star-scapes and frosting-painted tentacles curling out from behind alien moons.  The universe had to be huge enough, Karkat thought.  The universe was huge and grand, and all those stars quite possibly didn’t give a fuck about any of them.  It felt more _alright_ , now, to think he wanted Gamzee Makara to come hang out at his apartment, or pick up drive-through with him, or message him a ton of rambling thoughts in the middle of the night so he could complain about it in the morning.

It felt alright to tell Gamzee some of the truth, in a halting, apologetic voice, too, with his face buried in his hand.  The key, the parking lot, the stars.  The slow, self-conscious way one of Karkat’s arms twined around Gamzee’s back, squeezing him softly, just to see how it felt.  Gamzee seemed surprised about that, though he was also pretty motherfucking touched that Karkat kept the card he’d made in his actual fucking nightstand.  Ha!  Never would’ve guessed that shit, that’s for sure.  Gamzee relaxed into Karkat's arm soon enough...  And when he pulled Karkat in to lean against the softness of his shoulder, Karkat didn’t resist even a little.  He  _did_ finally take a tiny, hesitant sip of the drink Chahut had made him, though, and then immediately cough-grimaced into his sleeve.  Very smooth.  Definitely.

“This tastes like melted-down hard candy,” Karkat said.  He shoved the drink into Gamzee’s hands, and it was gone in what felt like the next couple seconds.  It sort of figured he’d like something like that.

They watched the stars, then, and talked about nothing-things.  Dirk's robot in the walls of the store...  What the closest names to "Karkat" actually were, printed on truck stop mugs...  You know.  They watched the cars pass by, and the streetlights flicker.  Gamzee pulled out a deep purple crystalline-looking pipe after a while, and fiddled with a little tin he’d had in his pocket.  As soon as his arm pulled away, Karkat wondered when it would come back – of course Karkat knew why he’d found himself wanting to shuffle other guys’ arms off him, before.  He’d known, whether he was _willing_ to know it or not.  He imagined Gamzee’s arm tossed over him warm and heavy in sleep, for just a guilty second…  He imagined being the one reading directions in the dead of night instead of Chahut.  It was all disgustingly, embarrassingly simple to picture.  Karkat might’ve been mad at himself, except that he wasn’t.  Not exactly.  Gamzee offered him the pipe, and Karkat shook his head.

When Gamzee shifted, tilting Karkat’s head back just a little bit with an unsteady, tender hand, at first he thought maybe this guy he’d worked with for so long – this guy who’d decorated their lockers and sometimes forgot letters in “Graduation” and had gotten sent home one Halloween for “excessively” painted on fake wounds – was going to kiss him.  Karkat realized, and smiled without meaning to, just like he hadn’t  _meant_  to mind so much when Gamzee disappeared.

Maybe that was why Karkat kissed Gamzee first, then, tasting clown paint and smoke and Chahut’s too-sweet circus-y cocktail as all the stars were watching.


End file.
